Driving a motor vehicle is an integral part of life in our society. People begin driving in their teenage years and many continue driving well into their 80's and 90's. Operating a motor vehicle is a common practice and some of the activities associated with driving are so routine that they can become second nature to a driver. One such activity is maneuvering the gear shift in the vehicle. The gift shift of a vehicle engages the transmission of the vehicle and enables the driver to determine the direction that they want to the vehicle to move.
Today, many drivers perform multiple tasks when occupying the driver's seat. Even if not performing multiple tasks, many drivers become distracted by other events or actions or by their own thoughts. As a result, sometimes drivers do not pay attention to basic, but critical operations of the vehicle. One such operation that is sometimes overlooked is the placement of the gear shift in the appropriate position for the movement of the vehicle. It is not unusual for a driver to unknowingly position the gear shift in a position such that the vehicle is going to move in the opposite direction of the one desired by the driver. For example, the driver may desire for the vehicle move in reverse to back out of a parking spot. However, the driver has unknowingly place the gear shift in the drive position such that the vehicle is going to initially move in the forward direction. As driver presses the accelerator, the vehicle moves forward. If there is something directly in front of the vehicle, there could be a collision before the driver realizes the mistake and stops the vehicle. The same situation would exist if the driver intended to move forward, but mistakenly positioned the gear shift in the reverse position.
A driver mistakenly positioning the gear shift in the wrong position is just one of several safety hazards that can result from operating a motor vehicle. To address some of these hazards and to improve the safety of operating a motor vehicle several innovations have been developed to facilitate motor vehicle safety. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,737,866 to Wu, et al, describes an auto-parking device installed on a vehicle comprises a vehicle status sensing unit for detecting a state of a vehicle, an image acquisition unit for capturing vehicle outside image, a range sensing unit for measuring the space, a processing unit for receiving states of the vehicle from the vehicle status sensing unit, receiving environmental states from the image acquisition unit and range sensing unit, calculating a parking path based on parallel parking or back-in parking and then controlling the vehicle steering, throttle and brake via a driving control unit to automatically park the car into the space as per the planned parking path.
U.S. Patent Application No.: 20080023247 to Hall discloses a vehicle having mounted therein a safety system. The safety system may indicate contact between an external object and the vehicle as the vehicle moves in reverse gear. The indication of contact may include automatically shutting down the vehicle engine, engaging the hand braking system of the vehicle, and honking the vehicle horn. The reverse drive safety system for a vehicle may include arms, a sensor cable that may extend between the arms and connect to a sensor spool. The reverse drive safety system additionally may include a sensing device to sense whether an external object has contacted the sensor cable or the arms and may include an electric motor that winds and unwinds the sensor cable based on a signal from the sensing device or a signal from a reverse indicator. The electric motor also may engage and disengage the vehicles hand brake system based on a signal from the sensing device and the reverse indicator. The sensor device additionally may be in communication with an engine kill switch and the vehicle horn.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,909,968 to Yokota describes an arrival detection method for automatically detecting arrival of a current destination based on various conditions and proceeding to route guidance for the next destination when two or more destinations are specified. The method includes the steps of guiding a vehicle of the user to a current destination, detecting whether a current vehicle position is within a predetermined distance from the current destination, applying a primary condition when the vehicle is within the predetermined distance, applying a secondary condition when, the primary condition is met, and determining arrival at the current destination when the secondary condition is met and proceeding to a route guidance operation for the next destination. The primary condition is a time length during which the vehicle is stationary within the predetermined distance from the current destination.
U.S. Patent Application No.: 20060244313 to Sullivan describes an automotive safety system is includes a power window that is automatically lowered a prescribed distance from a fully raised position in response to the car being put into reverse so that the driver may hear outside sounds. According to a second embodiment, the radio system is also turned down when the car is put into reverse.
U.S. Patent Application No.: 20090030611 to Jeong-Shiun Chen discloses a GPS navigation device with a car rear-viewing function is disclosed herein, which includes a monitor, a GPS navigation module receiving a GPS navigation information and providing it to the monitor, a car rear-viewing module providing a car rear image from a camera to the monitor, a switch unit, and a micro control unit. When the shift lever of the car is located in a reverse gear position, the micro control unit sends a switch command to the switch unit to allow the car rear-viewing module to transmit the car rear image to the monitor. In contrast, when the shift lever is not located in the reverse gear position, the monitor is switched to be controlled by the GPS navigation module for displaying the navigation information. Therefore, there is no need to install an additional monitor for displaying the GPS navigation information and the car rear image information, respectively.
In addition to these describes patents and patent applications, other patents including U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,082,359; 5,568,024; 7,991, 520; 4,698,571 and 4,643,048 and U.S. published patent application Ser. Nos. 12/293,445; and 11/520,594 describes methods and systems with the intent to address motor vehicle safety issues.
Although there are many innovations that have the intent to address various safety issues related to operating a motor vehicle, none of these innovations directly address the problem associated with a driver mistakenly positioning the gear shift such that the vehicle will move in the opposite direction desired by the driver and thereby increasing the chances of the vehicle colliding with an object or person in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle. There remains a need for a method and system that will detect when the gear shift is positioned such that the vehicle is about to move in the opposite direction to the direction desired by the vehicle driver.